Both FIPA and Agentcities are aiming towards the pratical application of
agents and agent technologies, so they are looking at choosing an ontology
representation language (ORL) from a pragmatic standardisation perspective:
1. To assist in the ontology modelling exercise. Both FIPA and Agentcities
are closely related to standardisation and one of the key points that
coollaborative ontology modelling promotes is a standarisation of
vocabularies across an application domain or domains.
2. To assist in ontology representation exchange. Initially, we expect that
FIPA and Agentcities will develop ontologies in a human-centric,
collaborative manner since most application domains that they are trying to
define are reasonably small and finite (i.e., bottom up rather than
top-down). However, in the future, it will be important that an ORL can also
express large ontologies and can reference terms in other ontologies,
possibly in other ORLs.
3. To assist in ontology translation. As the nodes in the network of
FIPA-compliant agent platforms increases, so the heterogeneity in the
network increases. FIPA is based on a model of uinting heterogeneity through
interoperability, and a key feature of a suitable ORL should be
like-compatibility with other ORLs. If the functionality is too diverse,
then translation between ORLs will be more difficult.
One of the goals of FIPA will be to probably pick up where the WebONT group
leaves off. That is, FIPA will leave the standardisation of the design
aspects of a suitable ORL to groups like WebONT, but will look at the more
pragmatic aspects of ontologies, such as ontology description definitions,
ontology discovery, ontology translation, etc.
There are other aspects that FIPA is interested in when choosing an ORL,
such as:
1. Complexity; how easy is the ORL to learn, use and implement.
2. Size; how big is the ORL and can its functionality be divided into useage
layers.
3. Suitability; what specific problems does the ORL address and what
problems is it best/worst suited to handle.
4. Adoption; what is the target audience of the ORL and who is likely to
adopt its useage.
I hope that this summarises the position from a standardisation perspective.
I would also like to make a summary at a later date of the more practial
efforts going on in each group, which we can use a definite use cases.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best wishes,
Jonathan Dale, PhD
Member of Research Staff
Network Agent Research Group
Fujitsu Laboratories of America
595 Lawrence Expressway
Sunnyvale, California 94085
USA
Tel: +1 408 530 4543
Fax: +1 408 530 4515